"But — how are we even going to get there?" I turned the letter over in my hands, as if the back of it might offer an answer. "We're in the mortal world. Vildora doesn't exactly have a front door you can knock on." Mousikí opened his mouth — and then closed it again. For once, he didn't have a quick answer. He looked around the tent, at the packed suitcases, at the silver lanterns swaying gently overhead, and the silence stretched out in a way that felt very much like neither of us had any idea what to do next. Then a soft whine cut through it. I turned. Chrysós stood at the entrance of the tent, one large paw just over the threshold, his amber eyes fixed on me with an expression that was almost embarrassed — the look of an animal that wasn't sure of its welcome but had come anyway. He whined again, quieter this time, and padded a few steps inside before stopping. His nose lifted, scenting the air in long, deliberate pulls. I stared at him. He stared back. Then he crossed the room, lowered his great golden head, and pressed his snout firmly against my hand. The warmth of it surprised me — not the heat of Forá's corrupted creature, but something gentler. Real. He held still for a moment, letting me feel it, and then pulled away and looked at me with those clear amber eyes as if he were waiting for me to understand something. "Chrysós—" I started. He turned and walked out of the tent. I followed without thinking, Mousikí's footsteps close behind mine. Outside, the cove was just as we had left it — the waterfall, the mist, the ancient hum of magic beneath everything. Chrysós moved ahead of us without hurrying, padding across the wet rock toward the hot spring at the center of the cove. He stopped at its edge, looked back at me once, and then looked down at the water. The spring's surface shimmered in the way it had when we arrived — that silver-gold luminescence rising from somewhere underneath, not quite natural light, not quite magic, but something older than both. I had noticed it when we first arrived and filed it away. Now, standing over it, I felt something else. A pull. Familiar in a way I couldn't immediately place. And then I could. Ebony Waterfall. The cavern. The moment before Forá had torn the portal open — she had pressed my blood into the surface of the broken dimorson, and the air had warped and split. A wound in the world, she had called it. A door made of blood and old magic and the power that lived in certain places. The golden blood. The magic. I looked at the spring. I looked at Chrysós, sitting patiently at its edge, watching me with those patient amber eyes. "Chrysós," I breathed. "You absolute genius." "What?" Mousikí appeared at my shoulder, looking between me and the fox and the water with the expression of someone who had missed several important steps. "What are you looking at? What's so special about the spring?" I was already moving. I grabbed his arm — the healed one, still stained at the sleeve — and turned it over, examining the dried gold at the fabric's edge. The potion had closed the wound cleanly, but the blood that had already fallen was still there, flaked and dark against the cloth. I picked at the dried edge carefully, gathering what I could between my fingers — small, brittle flakes of gold that caught the light like fragments of something precious. "Forá used my blood to open the portal," I said, not looking up, working quickly. "She pressed it into the stone near the waterfall — near the magic. The blood reacted with it. It opened a door." I glanced up at him. "This spring is old magic. Older than anything in Vildora, maybe. If it worked once—" "It'll work again," Mousikí finished slowly, his eyes dropping to the flakes of gold in my palm. Something moved behind his expression — not quite doubt, not quite belief, but the particular look of someone rapidly recalculating. "That's — actually, that's not entirely insane." "High praise." "Don't push it." I turned to the spring and crouched at its edge, holding my palm out over the surface. The warmth rose up to meet my hand even before I'd lowered it fully — that deep, resonant heat, the kind that came from far below. I tipped my hand and let the dried flakes fall. They touched the water. For a moment, nothing happened. The flakes drifted on the surface, catching the silver light, dissolving slowly at the edges. Then the water moved.It started at the center — a slow rotation, almost imperceptible, the surface tilting inward as if something beneath had begun to pull.
